Criminal case rocked Victorian London to its knickers, as it were!

In 1870, a sensational criminal case rocked Victorian London to its knickers, as it were. Two male transvestites — who’d adopted the names Fanny and Stella — were arrested outside the Strand Theatre, where police had previously observed them “lasciviously ogling” male theatregoers.

Fanny had further outraged the officers by entering the “Ladies Retiring Room,” where she asked the attendant to pin up the lace on her crinoline hem. Cross-dressing and female impersonation however, were not illegal in England. “Buggery,” however, had become a crime, punishable by death only nine years earlier.